


let loose your longing

by casualbird



Series: riza/gracia hours [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Domestic, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Quiet Sex, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:15:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29317725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: She is so soft, Gracia, so warm. So delicate, the way she moves her mouth, the way her fingers trail down past Riza’s breast, lighting like snowflakes on the swell of her hips.Riza and Gracia settle in for the night.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Gracia Hughes
Series: riza/gracia hours [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153511
Kudos: 5





	let loose your longing

When dinner is finished, when the stoneware bowls are washed and patted dry, when sweet Elicia has been tucked into her bed with a kiss, the house is quiet.

Quiet, a decompressing thing, like slipping in a hot bath, like unhooking a brassiere. Riza does, hair pinned up to keep dry, body swathed in a housecoat that used to be Gracia’s, that now belongs to both of them together.

It’s washed-soft, the cotton pilling, the cuffs worn out by worrying fingers. Petal pink, not a color that Riza thinks of herself in.

But it smells like Gracia, like herb and laundry soap. Feels like Gracia, heavy-warm across sore shoulders, laid across her aching knees.

Of course, there’s no need for a memento of Gracia--she is here, in all her gentle presence, nestled in the sag in the old sofa. They sit hip to softening hip, shoulder brushing shoulder as Gracia mends, as Riza fumbles with her knitting.

Once in a while, Gracia will turn, will guide her hands with cool-tipped fingers, will whisper little pointers in her ear. _Don’t choke up on the thread,_ she says, _be gentle._

Riza tries, on and on, to be gentle. Succeeds, even, though the scarf she makes is a wobbly, uneven thing. Gracia will wear it all the same, when it is finished. Will praise its heathered color, the love that it was made with.

Even now she reaches in to feel it, to trail fingertips along the weave, to croon at Riza’s progress. Rests her head on Riza’s shoulder, cheek nuzzling at the fabric of that housecoat.

“You know,” she whispers, “I’m surprised this old thing fits you. It must be… oh, ten years old? A little more, maybe. I was a bit slighter, then.”

The admission comes without regret, without the barest ounce of longing. Gracia’s body speaks to its thirty-eight years, to experience, to motherhood. To comfort, safety, peace and plenty, and she has no higher ideal of beauty, at least not for herself.

Neither does Riza--not when Gracia is so warm and soft against her, gentle on the hard facets of her body, her stocky soldier’s frame. Not ever.

Gracia is near to her now, sealed safely to her side. Still, Riza cannot help but want her closer.

They lean together, Riza’s temple at the crown of Gracia’s head, and it is enough for the moment. Until the fire burns down, until she’s finished with a few more rows.

She knows that it could be enough forever.

Gracia sighs, tenderly, wistful as a girl. Her palm lays light over the curve of Riza’s forearm, stroking at her sleeve.

“If you knit too long,” she says, “your fingers will get sore.”

Riza nods, just gently. Lays her knitting in her lap, cracks her knuckles one by one.

“Right you are,” she says. “Though I’d like to have it finished by the new year, when the weather really gets its boots on.” It’s a beloved little figment--her hands, calloused and careworn as they are, wrapping that scarf around Gracia’s neck, over her lips and the end of her nose. Seeing her out into the bright cold, and knowing that she will be kept warm.

“You will. You will, but not if your fingers seize up. And...” A little sigh, a little hem. A shift against Riza’s shoulder, and the motion feels like a smile. “I think I’d like you to take me to bed now, anyway.”

A smile, the gentle quirking of a brow. “Oh? And tell me, Gracia, tell me what you mean by that.”

Gracia’s laugh is nothing but a breath, a contented tiny sigh. “Oh,” she says, all airy, “whatever you’d like it to. If you’re tired, we can rest, but if you’d like to… Riza, dear heart, could we make love?”

Riza doesn’t know how she does it, with her delicacy, with the lightest of hands--still, her words fall on Riza’s ears like kisses, still they amplify her want. Still they warm her, better than the fire, almost equal to the lay of Gracia’s form on hers.

She shifts, rising, catching sweet Gracia up in her arms like a bride. Gracia’s giggle is the loudest sound they’ve made in hours, clear and bright like a cool brook, and Riza stifles her own laugh in the thicket of Gracia’s hair.

“Hush,” she says, and doesn’t mind the strands that catch in her mouth. Gracia nods, whispering an apology that they both know they don’t need, ducking her head into the cradle of Riza’s broad shoulder. Nuzzling to her, into the collar of that housecoat, humming soft and pleased and safe, not wavering even as Riza bears her safely up the stairs.

They’ve done it enough, before, and Riza is as steady, sure-footed as anyone she’s met. Gracia tells her so, as they slip past noisy floorboards in the corridor, but not with words. Only with butterfly kisses to Riza’s neck, plush lips drawing tenderly across her skin.

Riza steps over the threshold of their bedroom, then, lays Gracia squarely on her feet. Smiles, when Gracia turns, takes her collar in gentle fingers, beckons her into a kiss.

She is so soft, Gracia, so warm. So delicate, the way she moves her mouth, the way her fingers trail down past Riza’s breast, lighting like snowflakes on the swell of her hips.

“Gracia,” she whispers, in the sliver of space that remains. There is nothing else to say, nothing quite so elegant, nothing better for the point.

Except, perhaps, “I love you,” so Riza says that too. Lifts her hands to Gracia’s waist, slipping underneath her cardigan, around her back to feel her rabbit heart.

Her love just kisses her again, slow and even, and slips one soft thigh between the cords of Riza’s, to the place where Gracia’s warmed her over.

Is gone, then, just as quickly, dancing back with a slick-lipped smile, a tinge of mischief that wouldn’t go amiss on a girl fifteen years her junior. It glimmers in the dark, so brightly that Riza doesn’t even think to flick the lightswitch. Just stands there, waxing mute a second, eyes as warm and smooth as hearthstones.

She lets Gracia’s deft fingers tug at the sash of her housecoat, lets her pull it free with all the tender focus of unlacing a corset. Shrugs it off, half-folds it, lays it nearly neat on the chifforobe. Makes to lie down, hands hastening to the buttons of her nightshirt.

She fumbles them, a little, because she cannot help but watch.

The snow falls silent on the sill, as quiet as the pooling of Gracia’s nightdress about her ankles, shushing soft against the floorboards. As gentle as her body bends to pick it up, to lay it folded over the back of the rocking chair, to step lightly to bed.

To nestle in tenderly beside Riza, over the quilt--they can be each other’s warmth, this close, this fervid. Gracia shifts onto her side, skates housewife’s fingertips up Riza’s hardened arms, across the scars that marble her like veins of silver in stone. Over her shoulders, the hard jut of her clavicles, tracing the deltaed stretch marks on her breasts. Gracia sighs into the scant space between them, and kisses her lips, chapped and bitten and tasting of milk tea.

“You’re lovely,” she whispers, and her Riza sighs with satisfaction.

“You as well. Come here, Gracia, I’ll show you.”

Riza’s hands are a working woman’s hands, but they lay just as delicate on Gracia’s skin, on the light bow of her back, the space between her shoulder blades and down, over the thickening of her waist, the soft-covered crest of her hip. Over the stretch-warped skin there, dappling pink and curving out across her belly. She’s perfect, here, velvet-skinned, body showing all she’s been. 

Riza tells her with kisses to her neck, her collarbone, nuzzling at her breast. At the curve of her stomach, her navel, her hip.

Down from there, even, to the warm place where Gracia wants. She stays there, wide-mouthed, laving, loving, palm cradling her soft thigh. Lifting it up over her shoulder, to get properly in place, and that’s when Gracia gasps, tangles her fingers in Riza’s sleek pinned-back hair.

“You’re so good to me,” she mumbles, “too good to me,” but Riza knows she can be better. Puts herself to it in earnest, adoring with her lips, the flat of her tongue. Suckling, soft where Gracia needs it, in that way that makes her keen.

Makes her shiver, curls her fingers and flutters shut her eyes, tenses her thighs about Riza’s ears until there is nothing to her world but Gracia--the earthen taste of her, the hushed hitch of her breathing.

Until there is nothing to Gracia but Riza, her practiced attentions, the stroke of her rough palm on Gracia’s flank. Until Gracia tremors deep, lays one hand over her mouth, muffling one last desperate gasp. Until she falls back slack against the pillows, unspooled like a spent roll of thread, sated.

“Good to me,” she says again, when she’s the wherewithal to. When she’s done watching the sweep of Riza’s wrist across her mouth, done marveling at all her new flyaway hairs.

“I try to be,” says Riza, as gentle as their eiderdown, earnest.

Gracia knows. Shifts up onto her elbows, smiles slim and stunning in the dark. Asks her, sweetly, if she’d like to take her turn.

Riza assents, and they come together again like milk into tea, like moonlight through a window, again and again until their lips hang slack, minds bleary, until there’s nothing for them but snuggling up beneath the covers, sleep.

All of it silent, all of it awed. All of it familiar, all of it loved.

**Author's Note:**

>  **IT'S STILL FEMSLASH FEBURARY BAYBEE!!!** i hope you enjoyed this--i felt like i needed something a little lighter after my last piece, something a little more accessible. let me know what you thought, and if you'd like to see more for this pairing--they're tied for last place as My Very Rarest Pair. 
> 
> oh, and tell me in comments what you think the ship name should be--ricia? graza? something else? i'm torn.
> 
> title is from sappho 94. the anne carson translation of sappho is the best money i have ever spent.
> 
> come hang out with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles) if you like, i'm always looking for new friends! i don't even bite!
> 
> much love!  
> -mye


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